Would she want to carry on, do her own thing maybe, follow other tween and teen book bloggers into the fray?
Would she want me to carry on?
What about all those 'free' books (that last one sounds a bit 'mercenary' but let's face it, no book blogger out there who receives advanced 'free' copies of books would comfortably claim they wouldn't miss being on those PR lists and databases).
I'm proud of my kiddo, she's way wiser than her years and last week while we were out taking our 'government approved' walk / exercise for the day (just the two of us as her mum was busily waiting in for a non-book related parcel) the topic came up again.
"I don't want to do my own book blog" she said. "I don't want to carry on with ReadItDaddy." She looked at me with a worried expression on her face, almost like she was wincing expecting some massive explosion from me or an accusatory "BUT WHY, WHY WOULDN'T YOU?!? WHYYYYYY!"
She then carried on. "I love books, I love reading books, but I can't WRITE about books and I don't want to. I just want to read for the love of reading."
That more than anything struck me as the reason we are really calling it a day this year and again this is something I truly believe a lot of book bloggers struggle with many times over the course of writing their blogs. That thing where you feel the intense pressure of covering books you have little or no interest in, doing so around their release dates, being on blog tours purely because not being on them will count you out of something that may (but probably won't) increase the hits to your blog or at least the exposure of your blog to others.
I also fully respect the bloggers who don't want to leave the cosy family circle of the children's publishing industry. Those who have done such a brilliant job of becoming blogging celebrities, often as well known and well respected as the creatives who feed their blogs with awesome reading material.
Hearing that C didn't want to carry on was a tiny blow at first but hearing WHY she didn't want to carry on was interesting, because I can fully understand what it's like to be a tween and have the world at your feet, and so many ways to spend your spare time (and as any parent of tweens knows, their spare time is as minimal as ours is).
The "free books" question never really has been a question worth giving any time to. Books will always be in our lives, we buy an awful lot, we read an awful lot, we are immensely thankful for our local library having a brilliant selection - and of course it'll be quite nice to go into bookstores again and buy loads of books. Books we choose, books we genuinely want to read.
Once I could help C understand that I wasn't mad, I wasn't even a tiny bit miffed really, her face lit up and we carried on with our walk, talking about all the daft stuff a dad and daughter do when they get time together.
So that was that.
Reading for the love of books, and blogging about them because you truly love it, should really be the only reason you begin a book blog. If you feel that it's becoming a chore or you feel that you're being drawn into 'competing' in a crowded blogspace, or even if you're only doing it because you truly believe it'll net you a dream job then maybe take a long hard look at why you're doing what you do.